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Before I panic, I think it just that the Will of Magic simplified the explanations after Tedd mentioned they were hard to understand.

I look exactly like my avatar. It's my real world body that doesn't look like me.

I'm totally using "YES! ME GIRL! HAPPY LADY GIRL WOMAN!" next time somebody asks me a stupid question about my gender.

And this discussion has entered freefall

Breaking a writer's block in an epic way. Now, to finish the song tomorrow. Moo.

Please donomn't give me that.

It's a matter of personal taste. Understand that from the plant's point of view, the purpose of capsaicin, piperine, or allyl isothiocyanate (the "hot" components of peppers, peppercorns, and radishes*, respectively) is to make the various fruits undesirable to non-preferred consumers. Which, for capsaicin and piperine, are mammals. (Radishes, there are no preferred consumers - they hate everybody. But then, the allegedly-edible part of a radish is a root, not a fruit.) The seeds have a very low survival rate when they are chewed on by mammalian grinding teeth and then pass through a mammalian herbivore's digestive tract. Fruit-eating birds, on the other hand, will mostly pass the seeds through unharmed and then deposit them - possibly far away - in a nice little dollop of fertilizer. * A whole radish doesn't actually contain any allyl isothiocyanate. It contains two other chemicals** kept in separate compartments in each cell. When the radish is cut, crushed, ground, chewed, or otherwise damaged, this separation breaks down and the two chemicals react with each other to produce the spicy chemical. ** Yes, chemicals. I know it's a bad word in some circles, and you should never eat anything with chemicals in it. But the only thing chemical-free is hard vacuum. Like maybe you might find in the void between galactic superclusters, and I wouldn't bet overly strongly on even that. Oh, also, every living organism on this planet is the result of 2-4 billion years of random genetic modification of at least four different causes - radiation, chemicals, viruses, and sexual reproduction - so the only non-GMO food is salt.

Just found out that the noisy next door/other part of the house neighbours have been evicted. This makes me way happier than it should.

Come and see the violence inherent in the system!

The Japanese term for someone not being able to handle hot foods/drinks is "they have a cat's tongue." Prime example.

Susan, my ham loving cat is rather confused by hot ham. I gave her a bit off my sandwich and she was like "What the hell is this?" when she bit into it.

I don't look like a raccoon. I do, at times, act like Rodger however.

Susan, my probably autistic cat, loves ham. I can eat any thing else and she ignores me. Break out some cold ham slices on crackers and she is all over me. Because I'm soft, I give her a few tiny bits and she is the happiest I've seen a cat in a while.

The illusion you're using to look super-old seems to be working just fine, though assuming you look like your avatar.

Oh. That's what I've been doing wrong. I never bothered making the effort. Eh well, may as well keep the non-effort up, then.

Mr Dunkel obviously has the Dick Clark curse where an adult male must put great effort into his appearance each day to look mature. Otherwise, he looks like he never outgrew adolescence. Many men live with a similar curse where they may physically look their age, but must expend great effort to keep from acting like they never outgrew adolescence.

To my local post office to get a passport. Mrs. Prof and I are celebrating her retirement and our 35th wedding anniversary by going on a trip to the U.K. this October. I'm also going to meet up with a mate who does a radio show out of Lincoln called "The Cyber Den" and hopefully be a guest on his Wednesday program. (He did the interview with me on the Calibrations CD.) After that, it's a guided tour for us through England, Scotland, and Wales.

This is truly a monstrous idea for a storyline. I already like it better than the last one.

OK, so my immediate assumption was "dinosaur" but it seems we're running with dragons, so dragons is what you get. Henceforth, you shall be known as Arthur-nax.

I've been having this weird need to take a deep breath. I don't feel like I'm suffocating or anything dramatic like that, but when it happens it doesn't feel right unless I get full expansion that I can feel in my diaphragm and ribcage. Sometimes it'll turn into a yawn, maybe because that's the closest thing in the regular world, but most of the time it's just inhale deeply, then exhale. I'm wondering if it's because of the CPAP. I've been using it for over two weeks now, and I sleep just fine with it but I don't really feel any different during the day. I am, of course, asleep when using it so I can't tell whether it's helping me until I see the sleep doctor again and he downloads all the saved data from the machine. Is wearing the mask and breathing into it until I fall asleep making me more aware of my breathing? Is it some sort of effect from breathing against increased pressure retraining my lungs on what feels normal? Am I just weird? Guess I'll find out when I see the doc again. Don't worry, if I get any shortness of breath or other signs of hypoxia I'll call sooner than that. Interestingly enough, in order for insurance to pay for the darn thing, I apparently have to use it at least five hours a night for most nights, so it has given me another incentive to curb my tendency to read, internet, or otherwise keep myself awake far too late in the night and ending up short on sleep. You'd think that and fewer apnea incidents would make me feel better rested....

Repeat of my "low grade migraines are the suck" post...

I'm waiting for insurance approval to have an operation that will supposedly help with debilitating pain down my right side and right leg. We're talking about an 8.0 to 9.0 on a zero-to-ten scale. The pain kicked in out of nowhere on Monday of last week and hasn't left. The operation I'm waiting for is something called "radio ablation" of my right side nerve endings along my spinal cord. It's hard to describe, but it's supposed to make things feel better. I damn sure hope so.